The Detention Center
None — Harding County operates no jail
- Operated byNot applicable
- FindingHarding County is the least populous county in New Mexico (665 people per the state association of counties). Its own website lists Commissioners, Assessor, Clerk, Treasurer, Magistrate, Probate and Sheriff among elected offices, and County Manager, Finance, Senior Program, Road, and Community Building among departments — there is no detention centre or jail.
- Where prisoners goNot found — no county source names a facility that holds Harding County prisoners
- What was triedhttps://www.hardingcounty.org/ ; https://www.hardingcounty.org/elected_officials/sheriff.php ; https://www.hardingcounty.org/departments/index.php ; https://www.hardingcounty.org/departments/finance_department.php ; https://www.hardingcounty.org/residents/courts/index.php ; all 21 Board of County Commissioners agenda and budget-workshop PDFs linked from https://www.hardingcounty.org/elected_officials/commissioners/agendas.php were downloaded and searched for 'detention', 'jail', 'inmate', 'prisoner' and 'incarcerate' — none contained any of those words. Commercial inmate-lookup sites were excluded as sources.
Source: Harding County departments and elected officials listing · checked 2026-08-24
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot applicable — no county jail
- Original costNot applicable
- Paid for byNot applicable
- BedsNot applicable
Since then
- Not applicable
The Sheriff
Sheriff Pedro L. Bolin
- Runs the jailNo jail found — Harding County publishes no detention facility of any kind
- Office address35 Pine Street, Mosquero, NM 87733
- Phone575-673-2231; central dispatch 575-461-2280
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff
- Cross-checkThe New Mexico Sheriffs' Association county list records Sheriff Pedro Lorenzo Bolin for Harding County
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Harding County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-24
The Judges
New Mexico district and magistrate judges are state judicial officers, not county officials. A judge is initially appointed by the Governor from a judicial nominating commission list, then stands in the next partisan general election, and thereafter faces non-partisan retention elections. The Tenth Judicial District covers De Baca, Harding and Quay counties and has a single district judge, Chief Judge Timothy Rose.
Tenth Judicial District Court — Chief Judge
- Timothy Rose (general jurisdiction; serves Quay, De Baca and Harding counties)
Harding County Magistrate Court
- Trubert W. Flowers (Magistrate Judge, 355 Chicosa St., Roy, NM 87743)
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-08-24
The County Commissioners
They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.
- What they controlThe detention budget, the building itself, and the agreements that let other agencies rent its beds.
- What they don'tDay-to-day operations. The sheriff is separately elected and answers to voters, not to the board.
- The boardBoard of County Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Harding County operates no jail. That is the finding, not a gap: the least populous county in New Mexico has a sheriff's office and a magistrate court but no detention department, no detention line in any published agenda, and no detention staff.
- Where Harding County's prisoners are held could not be established from any source actually opened. The county's own agendas, budget workshop agendas and department pages never mention detention. Commercial inmate-lookup sites that claim a 'Harding County Detention Center' were excluded as unreliable, per the project's source rules, and are not cited.
- The county does publish commission agendas and budget-workshop agendas as PDFs, but no adopted budget document was reachable, so the budget check is recorded as no.
- NMSA 1978 §33-3-1 provides that common jails are under the control of the respective sheriffs, independent contractors, or jail administrators hired by the board of county commissioners or other local public body.
- New Mexico has no mandatory statewide jail inspection body. The New Mexico Association of Counties runs a voluntary accreditation program; nothing is published for Harding County, which operates no facility to accredit.
- NMSA 1978 §33-15-3, the death-in-custody reporting statute, applies to private correctional facilities only. New Mexico county jails have no state death-reporting requirement.
- Three-member Board of County Commissioners: Michael E. Lewis (Chairman, District 2), Evangeline Garrison (Vice Chairman, District 3), Pablo Trujillo (District 1). The Board meets on the second Thursday of each month at 8:30 a.m. in the Harding County Court Room. County Manager is Victoria Villarreal; Finance Director is Daniela Hammer.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Harding County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).
How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?
Your VOTE is POWERFUL.
The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the commissioners who pay for it.
Names verified 2026-08-24 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered